Easter City Read Free Page B

he pressed his lip. “‘hats what I ‘een tryin’
to say, da’n it!”
           
“Sorry.”
    The square had a certain magic. And not the
type of magic where everything’s going to be alright. Not two
beggar kids find the Elysian Fields in a peaceful square after a
shit life; we weren’t dead yet. The Square was damn cold, like
anywhere else, brutally so, and my belly was still empty as ever,
gapingly empty. But I felt a kind of nostalgia, as though I’d been
here before; that kind of magic.
           
“Do you know why it’s like this?” I nodded up at Main Street, far
up the road, where another group walked by the side street.
           
Joq shook his head and tossed the sock back to me. I didn’t bother
catching it. Joq stooped and chipped ice off the curb and pressed
it to his lip. He held up a hand, as if to sooth me, and pointed
with his chin to a building—a bar—that appeared to be one of the
few in the square that was completely intact. He inched toward it
and kept pointing with his chin.
            I
licked my lips and followed. “Okay, okay I said I was sorry. Stop
that.” He was backing away from me with exaggerated steps, as
though I had a gun.
            He
cracked a smile, cried out as his lip split, blew steam from his
nostrils and stamped to the door. I took another look around the
square before stepping inside. Though my stomach grumbled, a sense
of quiet settled my chest.
     
     
     

CHAPTER 3

    Wine gurgled from Plaster of Paris and
chuckled in the basin. A crowd of black suits and red ties and red
dresses and red heels stood around the fountain, dipping in their
glasses and quaffing.
      The room was dark and sort of
distorted and lagged every time I moved my head. I’d been drunk but
most wealthy people on Main Street were and I imagined this was how
they saw things. I stood amongst them, drunkenly I guess, and “Luck
be a Lady” echoed.
      I dragged my head around to see Joq
standing beside me looking around, only he wasn’t beggar-kid Joq
anymore. He was dressed up in an usher’s tuxedo. I looked down at
my shiny shoes and realized I was wearing the same getup.
      I blinked and suddenly we were in a
place like an auditorium and the wealthy people were there too,
sitting in rows while me and Joq were sitting in chairs propped up
at the back corner.
      On stage, voluminous
brocade curtains reeled back, revealing a woman with black hair and a toothless man in
a velvet assistant’s getup at her side. She was wearing a red dress
too, but not like the escorts. It was swirling and rich in color
like spun blood.
      They bowed and the assistant rolled
out a big box on wheels. He opened it and she got in. He gave the
box a spin and pulled down the flaps and she was gone. The crowd
clapped and wolf whistled.  
      I never got to see the act because the
scene faded. When it resolved, we were still in the auditorium,
only there were wealthy people circling us and they really did look
like devils. They scoured us with ravenous red eyes.
      Then the woman with the black hair—the
magician—shoved her way to the front of the crowd. She stood in
front of us grinning through her bleach-white teeth. She and hefted
a sword and let it hang in the air so the crowd had a moment to eat
up our fear before she made fleshy ribbons of us.
      I was calm for some
reason. I mean, I didn’t know what the hell was going on or where I was. How could I be
scared?
      I looked over at Joq who was pasty
white and drenched.
      “J-u.” my tongue was heavy. “J-o” my
jaw was splinted. “Joq…” My lips barely twitched, but the words
came out.
      Joq turned to me, ten afterimages of
his head slugging after the real one. He looked into my eyes, then
over my shoulder. Something he saw made him frown and gasp in
horror.
      I spun and, at the
same time, there was a loud bang. Again. Bang! The crowd scattered and people
trampled each other to get to the entrance.
      Joq